Workers and drones in a bee colony are in charge of putting in the necessary labor to keep the colony running smoothly. They accomplish everything, from food gathering to nest construction and brood raising, under the supervision of a queen bee who lays the hive’s eggs. What drives them? Survival.
Motivating your sales team, on the other hand, isn’t easy. To keep your team motivated to accomplish the sales goals, you’ll need well-thought-out sales incentive schemes. Businesses that use a sales incentive scheme report a 79 percent success rate in meeting their objectives by providing the right incentive.
The only problem is that creating a sales incentive plan that encourages each team member individually and collectively is easier said than done.
What Are Sales Incentives and Why Do You Need Them?
Sales incentives are bonuses given to salespeople who meet their sales targets. The incentive might be monetary or non-monetary, but the goal is the same: to motivate your sales force to achieve their objectives.
As a sales leader, you need both:
- Sales incentives programs to motivate individual representatives
- Sales incentives for teamwork that motivate individuals to collaborate as a group
But, aside from individual sales incentives, why do you need team incentives? Because owing to the Internet, your buyer’s journey has transformed.
Customers now do their research and reach out to sales representatives to answer their supplemental questions later in their journey, rather than early on as in the past when salespeople guided the full buyer’s journey, thanks to ever-increasing internet availability.
Another difference in the buyer’s journey is that buyers are no longer persuaded by a single sales representative. Potential buyers are more likely to speak with multiple representatives and even members of your team from diverse departments.
A buyer speaking with your salesperson, for example, may want to learn more about your product or service.
Overall, a sales incentive scheme can assist you in the following ways:
- Keeps your sales personnel motivated to achieve their sales targets
- Improves sales performance
- As your team works toward attaining their goals, you’ll be able to close more deals.
- Improves team loyalty because employees who work hard to earn incentives invest more in the company, making them more loyal to the team.
Must Read: Tips for Improving Sales Management
Sales Incentives Schemes
As we described above, drafting effective sales incentive schemes begins with an understanding of how the buyer’s journey has altered. Furthermore, understanding sales incentive programs are critical. These plans can assist you in dealing with changes in your buyer’s journey and, as a result, changes in your team’s roles.
Here’s a rundown of the five sales incentives:
Incentives tailored to certain roles
This entails assigning incentives based on the strength of the representatives for them to outperform themselves.
Split the incentives
This includes dividing the incentive among representatives who collaborate to close a deal. As a result, consider establishing split incentives for teamwork.
Pre-sale incentives
As previously said, interested customers are taking extra time to decide whether or not to do business with you. This lengthy decision-making process might diminish representative motivation, which is where presales incentives come in. These rewards representatives at different stages of the buyer’s journey to keep them focused.
Omnichannel incentives
In today’s buyer’s journey, customers undoubtedly connect with both AI and automated digital channels. As a result, salespeople may regard AI as a rival. Omnichannel incentives are, nevertheless, geared toward avoiding this by making sure that the representative is rewarded in all instances even if AI attracts the customer first.
Setting targets based on advanced analytics
It can be difficult to set realistic sales objectives, targets, and quotas for designing reward plans for a number of complex sales scenarios. Fortunately, a target setting based on advanced analytics can overcome this problem. It uses data analytics to create a fair sales incentive program that keeps salespeople more engaged.
The Different Types of Sales Incentives
Now that you’ve learned the fundamentals of a successful sales incentive program, let’s look at the many types of sales incentives available to you.
You can choose between two types of sales incentives:
1. Monetary incentives
Monetary incentives are also known as traditional money-backed incentives. Money, without a doubt, is a powerful incentive. More than half of the best organizations enhanced profits by encouraging employees with cash-based incentives, often known as Special Performance Incentive Funds (SPIFs).
Consider setting the following monetary incentives:
- Incentives through a commission structure
- Cash bonuses
- Allocating quotas
Ensure the incentive is evident in both cases. Your staff will understand that achieving X sales activity objective will result in a bonus, or that closing X deal as a team will result in a commission for everyone.
2. Non-monetary incentives
Monetary incentives can be prohibitively expensive. So, if your finance team says no, you’ll need to come up with a different sales incentive plan, which leads us to non-monetary incentives.
Non-monetary incentives are not only cost-efficient but they’ve also been shown to be more effective than monetary incentives because they provide positive experiences for employees, which become memorable. More than half of all salespeople believe that reward experiences are their preferred kind of compensation.
Here are a few ideas of non-monetary incentives
- Give product rewards, but make sure they’re goods that the representatives are interested in.
- Incentivize through opportunities for learning and training. Offer sales training classes, tickets to a sales event, or something similar.
- Invite your coworkers to a themed lunch. This goes a long way toward establishing lasting team experiences, as opposed to cash rewards, which your staff will spend and forget.
- Provide leadership opportunities. This will appeal to your team’s top performers the most. Are you working on a new project? Motivate salespeople by giving them the project’s lead.
- Travel tickets should be given away. This type of incentive is also a terrific approach to encourage staff to improve their performance.
Conclusion
Sales incentive schemes are one of the most effective ways to increase revenue. Please make informed decisions and set clear objectives when using it. If you’re not careful, you’ll have a hard time increasing your revenue and keeping your sales team motivated. You can also use automated technologies to automate the sales commission process as a best practise.